During my trip to Kuqa in southern Xinjiang, I stayed at Tianyuan International Hotel in Kuqa. The picture shows the exterior of the hotel.
Tianyuan International Hotel is a five-star hotel. Pictured is the hotel lobby.
The principle of accommodation on this trip is that there are many, not bad ones. The picture shows the tour guide checking us in.
The rooms at Tianyuan International Hotel are large and the facilities are quite new.
The bathroom of Tianyuan International Hotel is also very large, and the facilities are also good.
In the evening, our Anhui friends from Kuqa invited us to dinner. Eating a seafood feast in Xinjiang is a luxury.
Most of my friends drink Moutai
The Georgian red wine I drank with another friend later learned that the price was even more expensive than Moutai!
On October 18, after breakfast, drive to Kizil Grottoes. Bayinkuqa to Bruker is the southern section of the Duku Highway. The guide said that the scenery in the southern section is more beautiful than that in the northern section. After driving for dozens of kilometers on the Duku Highway, the roadside landforms are really peculiar, similar to Danxia landforms, with mountains intertwined in various colors and shapes. These scenes look very ordinary in Xinjiang, but if they are in the mainland, they become tourist hotspots.
The place we passed by on the way is called the Potala Palace Scenic Spot.
Local people call this Danxia Mountain "Potala Palace"
There is a huge stone engraved with "Zhengfayanzang" nearby.
The U-shaped road on the Duku Highway is not inferior to some domestic Internet celebrity U-shaped roads.
This is the Duku Highway taken by the group members with a drone
The Kizil Grottoes, built on a cliff by the Muzhat River, are the earliest grottoes excavated in China, half a century earlier than Dunhuang, and have continued to be excavated for hundreds of years. The picture shows the parking lot of the Kizil Grottoes.
The Kizil Grottoes are divided into 4 grotto areas, with a total of 236 large and small grottoes. Most of the statues have been destroyed. Among them, 135 are relatively intact, and 80 have murals inside. It is the earliest and largest grotto group in China. The picture shows the guide map of Kizil Grottoes.
The Kuqa area was called Qiuci in ancient times. It was one of the 36 countries in the Western Regions and a famous city on the ancient Silk Road. More than 2,000 years ago, Zhang Qian visited here when he was on a mission to the Western Regions. During the reign of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty, King Jiangbin of Qiuci implemented a policy of friendship with the Han Dynasty and went to Chang'an several times to congratulate him. In 60 BC, the Western Han Dynasty established the Protectorate of the Western Regions, and since then, Kucha has returned to the Han Dynasty. The picture shows the entrance to the Kizil Grottoes.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the forces of the Han Dynasty no longer competed in the political arena of the Western Regions, and Kucha entered the period of Buddhist culture as an independent kingdom. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Qiuci absorbed Indian culture and Gandhara Buddhist culture to form a splendid local national culture. Today we see the Kizil Grottoes and other Buddhist monastery sites in ancient Qiuci areas such as Kuqa and Baicheng It was from that period that excavation and construction began to survive. The picture shows a view of the Kizil Grottoes.
At the same time, the Buddhist culture in Kucha also entered the heyday of the Buddhist culture in Anxi, which coexisted with the Buddhist culture of the Tang Dynasty, and the art of Buddhist grottoes reached the point of perfection. Looking back on the history of Kuqa, we can see that ancient Qiuci has an inseparable and close connection with the land of the Central Plains. The picture shows the stone lions in front of the Kizil Grottoes.
There are a large number of portraits in the style of ancient Greece and Rome in the grottoes. In order to protect the murals in the caves, it is forbidden to take pictures, and travel bags and cameras must be stored. You can bring your mobile phone, but you are not allowed to take pictures. The photos are saved on the tour guide's mobile phone.
There are more than 10,000 square meters of murals in existence, and they are the most precious treasures of the Kizil Grottoes. They share the reputation of China's "Four Great Grottoes" with the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. It was discovered by the German Le Coq in 1912. In the second year, he ordered 80 large wooden boxes in Kuqa and stole the most exquisite murals of nearly 500 square meters. The photos are saved on the tour guide's mobile phone.
Kumarajiva, an outstanding translator of Buddhist scriptures in ancient China, was also a famous eminent monk of that era. At that time, the Kucha culture played an inestimable role in the development of the Central Plains culture, especially the Kucha music and dance, which was very popular in the Central Plains, and the Central Plains music and Tang poetry and Song Ci borrowed a lot from it. The photo was taken in the Kizil Grottoes.
The Kizil Grottoes were first excavated in the 3rd century AD, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. From the 5th to the 7th centuries AD, the incense was at its peak. At that time, the population of Kucha Kingdom was more than 100,000, and there were tens of thousands of monks practicing in the Thousand Buddha Caves, which is a bit scary. The photo was taken in the Kizil Grottoes.
By the 8th century AD, due to wars and the entry of other religions, the knocking of the Buddhist caves gradually stopped. The duration of the Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves is unique in all countries in the world. It is one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units announced in 1961. The photo was taken in the Kizil Grottoes.
Under the cliffs of the Kizil Grottoes, the golden poplar is the poplar, the creek is the white flower, and the strange peak is the piercing blue sky. Mountain light, water color, poplar trees, and grottoes complement each other, and each is gorgeous, forming a very beautiful picture scroll.
After turning to Provincial Highway 307, the road condition is even better than that of Duku Highway. The terrain is flat. There are rows of towering poplar trees on both sides of the road. Behind the poplar trees are farmland and Uyghur folk houses, giving off a prosperous atmosphere. Because it is close to the southern slope of Tianshan Mountain and moistened by mountains and rivers, this place is rich and peaceful.
At noon, I had lunch at this Uighur restaurant in Baicheng County.
In a hurry, we ordered noodles.
When eating in Xinjiang, everything is cooked to order.
The mutton skewers in Xinjiang use fresh mutton.
The villagers in Xinjiang are warm and friendly.
there is also roast chicken
Before departure, we bought some fruits here.
